Wednesday, March 26, 2014

OddDreams: The Class I Keep Forgetting to Go to

Over the past month or so I've been having this recurring dream where I've completely forgotten about a certain class that I'm enrolled in, and then don't realize I've been missing it until a long time has passed or the semester is almost ending. This fictional class is a Japanese class that is solely about kanji. And oddly enough, it's taught by the professor who taught a Korean history course that I took a year ago.

I remember dreaming about the first day of the semester, where I walked into the classroom (which was abnormally large both in size and headcount), we went through the syllabus and got our first assignments, etc. Then I remember having another dream where I had missed a couple weeks without noticing. I was just going about my normal school day when I suddenly realized, Wait! I have another class, don't I? What's that class again? Oh yeah, the kanji class. Why do I keep forgetting that one? I return to this class, but am overwhelmed and frustrated by how behind I am.
Then, last night I dreamt that I'd completely forgot about the class again. But this time, I have a meeting with the Korean professor who explains to me that it's near the end of the semester (my dream follows the same time frame as my real life), I've missed too much to even think about catching up or getting a decent grade, so I've just been removed from the roster with an "X" on my record. No damage to my GPA, just money lost and time wasted. This professor helps me to arrange to re-enroll in the same class next semester.

The scary thing is that this thing feels really real. The feelings of frustration, confusion, and discouragement that I have in my dream feel really real. I'm serious! It's very unsettling. It's so bad that a couple times I've woken up and had to run through this semester's schedule in my head just to be sure that I haven't missed anything, that there's no extra class hiding in my brain that's just been escaping me all semester.